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Jeff RoweJeffrey Rowe has almost 40 years of experience in all aspects of industrial design, mechanical engineering, and manufacturing. On the publishing side, he has written well over 1,000 articles for CAD, CAM, CAE, and other technical publications, as well as consulting in many capacities in the design community. As editor of MCADCafe, Jeff brings extensive hands-on experience with many design and production software products, and bases his commentary on these products and services as a true end user, and not baseless marketing hype. He can be reached at 719.221.1867 or jeff@ibsystems.com. « Less

Jeff RoweJeffrey Rowe has almost 40 years of experience in all aspects of industrial design, mechanical engineering, and manufacturing. On the publishing side, he has written well over 1,000 articles for CAD, CAM, CAE, and other technical publications, as well as consulting in many capacities in the design … More »

Coming about six months after its major Windows releases, Autodesk, Inc. announced today the releases of AutoCAD 2015 for Mac and AutoCAD LT 2015 for Mac.

Although Autodesk estimates that only 1-3% of all Macs run CAD software, this is still a significant milestone for AutoCAD for the Mac platform, now in its fifth release. Significant because in the five years since the first release of AutoCAD for Mac, the Mac platform base and presence has expanded from about 15 million to today’s approximately 80+ million. A nice increase in potential market.

If there has ever been a company that has struggled to reinvent and find itself and its former stature in consumer and commercial technology, it’s HP.

There was a time when HP had no equal in several product segments, such as test & measurement, calculators, pocket PCs/personal assistants, etc., but those days are long gone. Sure, the company reigns in printers, and their desktop and mobile workstations are utilitarian (although the HP Z1 is a notable exception), but not nearly as competitive as in the good old days.

In an attempt to return to its former glory days, HP said Monday that it will split into two public companies with one side focusing on its cloud and enterprise market (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise), and the other on personal systems (computers) and printers (HP Inc.). The company also plans to cut another 5,000 jobs.

Although it’s a couple years old, check out HP’s CEO, Meg Whitman explain her plans for reviving HP:

Interview with Meg Whitman, HP CEO – The Plan to Revive HP

Some of the highlights of the announcement include:

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will build upon HP’s leading position in servers, storage, networking, converged systems, services and software as well as its OpenStack Helion cloud platform

Meg Whitman to be President and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise; Pat Russo to be Chairman of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Board

HP Inc. will be the leading personal systems and printing company with a strong roadmap into the most exciting new technologies like 3D printing and new computing experiences

Dion Weisler to be President and Chief Executive Officer of HP Inc.; Meg Whitman to be Chairman of the HP Inc. Board

Immediately following the transaction, which is expected to be completed by the end of fiscal 2015, HP shareholders will own shares of both Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. The transaction is intended to be tax-free to HP’s shareholders for federal income tax purposes.

The announcement comes as HP approaches the fourth year of its five-year turnaround plan. Over this time, the company has executed at least somewhat successfully against its turnaround objectives.

“Our work during the past three years has significantly strengthened our core businesses to the point where we can more aggressively go after the opportunities created by a rapidly changing market,” said Meg Whitman, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of HP. “The decision to separate into two market-leading companies underscores our commitment to the turnaround plan. It will provide each new company with the independence, focus, financial resources, and flexibility they need to adapt quickly to market and customer dynamics, while generating long-term value for shareholders. In short, by transitioning now from one HP to two new companies, created out of our successful turnaround efforts, we will be in an even better position to compete in the market, support our customers and partners, and deliver maximum value to our shareholders.”

Along with SpaceClaim being acquired by ANSYS earlier this year, the CAD consolidation train moves to its next stop with Stratasys announcing that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held GrabCAD in an all-cash transaction.

Stratasys Ltd, of course, is one of the leading global providers of 3D printing and additive manufacturing solutions. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but is rumored to be in the $100 million range. The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of September (that’s today!), subject to the fulfillment of customary closing conditions. Upon completion of the transaction, GrabCAD will operate as a unit within the Stratasys Global Products and Technology Group. Hardi Meybaum, co-founder and CEO of GrabCAD, will continue to lead GrabCAD within the group.

The company’s flagship product, GrabCAD Workbench is its cloud-based PDM for sharing and managing CAD files. The video provides a quick overview of GrabCAD Workbench.

What IS GrabCAD Workbench?

For those new to GrabCAD, it’s unique in that it’s more of a 3D CAD collaboration platform than it is a traditional CAD product. Launched earlier this, GrabCAD Workbench is a unique cloud-based collaboration hub designed to manage and share product development CAD files and other design data. In other words, a PDM system.

Founded in 2010 and led by Mr. Meybaum, a visionary entrepreneur and pioneer in 3D CAD cloud collaboration tools, GrabCAD is helping engineers get products to market faster by connecting people, content and technology. GrabCAD offers GrabCAD Workbench, a cloud-based collaboration tool that enables engineers and designers to share, view and manage CAD files and other design data. GrabCAD is also home to a community of more than 1.5 million global members who can access a large public CAD file library, as well as connect with other designers and engineers.

The acquisition should enable Stratasys to provide its customers with enhanced collaboration tools and improved accessibility relating to 3D CAD content. The addition of GrabCAD Workbench provides Stratasys with an opportunity to drive communication and collaboration throughout the 3D printing process and grow its technology solutions and user communities.

“The addition of GrabCAD provides Stratasys with a leading cloud-based collaboration platform for engineering teams to manage, share and view CAD files,” said David Reis, Stratasys Chief Executive Officer. “By increasing the collaboration and accessibility of 3D CAD files, we believe we can further accelerate the adoption of 3D printing solutions and Stratasys’ product offerings. Together with GrabCAD, we believe that we will accelerate innovation and provide increased value to a growing universe of customers seeking to utilize 3D printing solutions. We also welcome GrabCAD’s active and important community to the Stratasys family. The potential within our 3D ecosystem is very exciting.”

“GrabCAD was founded to bring the world’s engineers together and help them collaborate to bring better products to market faster,” said Hardi Meybaum, Chief Executive Officer of GrabCAD. “By joining forces with Stratasys, a global leader in 3D printing and additive manufacturing, we believe we can extend the reach of one of the most exciting and innovative design collaboration technologies available. With its broad and growing customer base and worldwide presence, Stratasys can provide more customers around the world with exciting new solutions to meet their design needs.”

Prior to the acquisition, GrabCAD had a number of relationships with CAD vendors for making it easier for users of products, such as Autodesk Fusion and Siemens Solid Edge to use the cloud-based service. It seems that the cloud-based nature of GrabCAD is what especially interested/enticed Stratasys for the acquisition.

The potential benefits are many, and through its acquisition of GrabCAD, Stratasys expects to gain:

Knowledge: With the addition of GrabCAD, Stratasys gains a team of software professionals with a deep understanding of the needs of designers and engineers.

Products: GrabCAD’s cloud-based collaboration platform, Workbench, will enable Stratasys to offer customers a solution to drive communication and ease of use throughout the design and 3D printing process. GrabCAD also provides Stratasys with the opportunity to further partner with CAD vendors and other ecosystem partners while offering innovative collaboration tools related to 3D CAD.

Community: GrabCAD has built a global, leading and fast growing community of mechanical engineers and designers, with 1.5 million users who are passionate about design. This includes a large online community of M-CAD users and a significant public online repository of free CAD files, with more than 500,000 CAD designs available for download and nearly 50,000 file downloads per day.

At SIGGRAPH 2014 last month we saw and heard many interesting things that greatly influence the computer graphics market – hardware, software, and services. We were invited to a luncheon sponsored by our friends at Jon Peddie Research that included a presentation on the CG market, entitled “Expectations, Fact, and Fantasy.”

As usual, Jon’s comprehensive presentation covered many aspects of the CG market, but the most telling facts were his forecast that the CG market will enjoy at least 5.5% annual growth for the next few years, and that he thinks the CG market as a whole will exceed $149 billion by 2017.

Interview With Jon Peddie Research and Dreamworks Animation

He said that the computer graphics industry has been a growth industry since it was established in the late 1970s. It has weathered the storms of recessions and has emerged renewed vigor and potential, partly due to a big boost from mobile and the move to 4K, but also from emerging technologies including 3D scanning, 3D printing, augmented reality, and VR.

The computer graphics hardware market was worth $120 billion in 2013 and is expected to exceed $149 billion by 2017, with software growing slightly slower than hardware.

The hardware segment of the CG industry has had steady growth, with the exception of gaming PC sales, which dropped by 3% over the past year. The largest growth has been in workstations and monitors, with (the already high) mobile graphics segment coming in a strong third. Gaming PCs have had steady to strong growth, and the total PC gaming hardware market (which includes aftermarket sales and peripherals) is estimated to be worth over $30 billion. New activity in APIs with developments like AMD’s Mantle, Google’s driver extensions for OpenGL ES, Apple’s Metal, and the promise of DirectX 12 in 2015 all will contribute to faster, richer, and higher resolution graphics for everyone.

For CG hardware, the biggest segment for 2017 will be mobile devices, with forecast sales exceeding $127 billion.

In 2013 the CG software market was worth $14 billion (not counting services, maintenance and other aspects) and is expected to grow to $17 billion by 2017 as the industry shakes off the remaining effects of the recession and starts upgrading software tools. The software suppliers (ISVs) have also changed their sales model moving more services to the cloud.

On the CG software side, CAD/CAM software was the largest single segment, with forecast sales of almost $9 billion in 2017.

We will see the development of traditional segments like CAD/CAM expand as new design approaches in automotive, aerospace, and architecture are adopted. The visualization market is showing significant growth due to the availability of more powerful and less expensive visualization technologies. GPU compute employing OpenCL and CUDA is penetrating further into new as well as traditional applications.

The software content creation market has been tough for the market leaders. They’re living with a mature market, with little growth, but stability among the competitors. However, there are new opportunities emerging as new approaches to content creation become practical, new distribution channels open up, and young generations arrive with a new fascination for 3D.

The demand for programmers, artists, scientists, and designers has picked up and the CG market is seeing startups arrive in emerging and reborn markets such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and casual games. The arrival of new APIs, and platforms are also stimulating development. Firms are actively looking for people who can use and exploit these new programs and their associated hardware accelerators.

New opportunities are also growing out of mainstream applications for the web and consumer applications. The social web remains a strong engine for growth. Social networks are encouraging people to learn new tools, create content for pleasure, and even look for jobs in the field. What used to be a very closed society of experts is now opening up due to the democratization of CG, fueled by Moore’s law and price-elasticity due to lower software costs.Read the rest of CG Market Forecast To Be ~$150 Billion By 2017

During SIGGRAPH 2014, we talked to a lot of attendees and exhibitors. One of the CG software developers we spent time with was MAXON, whose flagship product line is CINEMA 4D. Admittedly, this software product is targeted primarily to the media/entertainment market, but also has a place in the MCAD world as well, just as Autodesk’s Maya and 3ds Max have. Certainly not a huge market, but one that has a place for these specialized applications.

CINEMA 4D is a 3D modeling, animation and rendering application developed by MAXON Computer GmbH (Friedrichsdorf, Germany). It is capable of procedural and polygonal/surface modeling, animating, lighting, texturing, rendering, and common features found in 3D modeling applications.

We spoke with Paul Babb, President and CEO of MAXON for the Americas. He said that CINEMA 4D is an animation product used for motion graphics for broadcast television, visual effects, scientific/medical animation, video game graphics, and architectural and engineering visualization.

At their SIGGRAPH 2014 exhibit, MAXON employed a wide range of artists at the booth showing what CINEMA 4D can do, such as game developers, visual effects artists, and motion graphics experts. Also exhibited at the booth were demonstrations showing integration with the Arnold renderer and the Houdini graphics engine.

We just returned from three exhausting but exhilarating days at the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) 2014 in Chicago. This biennial, week-long exhibition and conference is by far the biggest manufacturing showcase in North America. As a matter of fact, it had over 110,000 registrants when we left the show at the end of its third day. IMTS occupies virtually all of the buildings at McCormick Place, covering millions of square feet, so you have to strategize how to see everything you want to see. It showcases just about anything you can imagine for manufacturing – metal cutting, abrasives, additive processes, CAD/CAM, controls, inspection – you name it, and it’s probably at IMTS.

IMTSTV – Live IMTS Coverage

MCADCafe conducted several video interviews that will be available for viewing in the very near future at www.mcadcafe.com. The interviewees were a diverse group, everything from traditional CAD/CAM vendors, to software component suppliers, and even a reseller.

Remember a long time ago when the so-called “paperless office” was just around the corner. Well, we’ve all turned a lot of corners over the years waiting for the nirvana that still seems to be “just around the corner.”

Of course, strides have been made for a way to communicate design engineering information in a paperless manner, but one of the most promising developments has been model-based definition (MBD) and model-based engineering/enterprise (MBE).

We spoke with Aaron Kelly, SOLIDWORKS’ Vice President, User Experience & Product Portfolio Management about many things regarding the SOLIDWORKS 2015 portfolio launch, including a brand new offering called SOLIDWORKS MBD. It is designed to help improve communication between design and manufacturing teams by enabling them to communicate product and manufacturing information (PMI) in 3D. The intent here is to use Model Based Definition and to no longer use 2D drawings to define products.

Although SIGGRAPH is primarily focused on computer graphics (CG) as it relates to media and entertainment (M&E), there were several technologies that could be used constructively in the MCAD arena.

One of the more interesting ones we came across with possible MCAD implications was Clara.io, a web-based 3D computer graphics software developed by Exocortex, a Canadian software company. Clara.io was announced in July 2013 and first presented as part of the SIGGRAPH 2013 program later that month. With that in mind, we checked it out earlier this month at SIGGRAPH 2014 in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Clara.io: Basics of Polygon Modeling

Clara.io is offered on what the company calls a freemium basis, a pricing strategy by which a product or service (typically a digital offering such as software, media, games or web services) is provided free of charge, but money (premium) is charged for proprietary features and functionality. Clar.io freemium pricing structure is discussed below.

Clara.io is part of an ongoing proliferation of web/cloud-based 3D technologies. WebGL, HMTL5, CSS3D, and Canvas were the start, and were followed by a myriad libraries and other 3D software that runs inside web browsers, and also can run under any OS, tablet, or smartphone.

Clara.io is an impressive example of such burgeoning cloud-based technology. Instead of being a proof of concept or a set of limited features, Clara.io is a comprehensive 3D app. It’s also open source and promises to support the Blender file format in the future (more about Blender later).

Clara.io: Real-time Collaboration

Clara.io has many interesting following features, including:

Hierarchical scene graph

Lights and cameras

Robust support for Polymeshes, including indexed UV, Normal and Color maps

Flexible operators (known as “modifiers” in 3DS Max.

Keyframe-based animation

Powerful sub-object editing

Renderer and pass management

Extensive materials

Sharing/collaboration capabilities

Rudimentary bones and skinning

Real-time multi-user collaborative editing

Automatic versioning with history (somewhat analogous to parametric, history-based CAD modeling and a PDM system)

We just returned from one of the most interesting events of the year for us and one that we always look forward to – SIGGRAPH 2014. SIGGRAPH (short for Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques) is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics (CG) convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization.

The first SIGGRAPH conference was in 1974, and this year’s event was held in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia.

As usual, we found the most interesting aspects of the conference to be the SIGGRAPH Emerging Technologies program and the exhibit floor.

In just about any industry or market segment you can think of, the words “cloud,” “mobile,” and “app” are about as ubiquitous as it gets. PLM is proving no different, although acceptance and implementation seem slow in coming. However, the tide is beginning to turn.

PLM, of course has received considerable support from large organizations, and is finally being embraced by significant numbers of SMBs. To date, the two biggest obstacles for SMBs considering PLM, much less implementing it, have been cost and complexity – whether real or perceived.

Although hardly the first or only one, a couple years ago Autodesk launched a major effort to bring PLM to the SMB masses with the introduction of cloud-based PLM 360. More recently it launched a PLM 360 app for iOS and Android mobile devices.